...in its sanitation and revenue collection problem
United Nations Volunteers (UNV), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Tuesday presented 28 litter bins worth over 20 million cedis to the Tema Municipal Assembly to reduce the high incidence of indiscriminate littering of refuse on the streets.
Mr Joseph Uche Oji, Programme Officer of UNV who made the presentation said even though there were litter bins at some various points in the municipality, many people were still littering the streets with empty water sachets, yoghurt and ice-cream containers.
" Tema, as an industrial city and gateway to the country, requires that the municipality is clean and also ensure that there is high sanitation standard, one of the indicators of level of a society's development", he said.
The UNV/UNDP Project under the first three phases fielded a team of United Nations Volunteers who worked with the stakeholders involved through civic processes to build trust between the taxpayers and the local authorities to strengthen the cohesion and confidence between the two parties.
The first three phases dealt with team building and sensitisation, baseline analysis of data and participatory planning process. The fourth phase, which is the implementation of the action plan, would take off in July, this year.
Mr Oji called for popular consultation forum to build on the capacity of revenue collection that would consolidate on the gains of the project with the view to replicating the experience in other parts of the country.
Mr Alfred Salia Fawundu, Resident Coordinator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said good governance, sustainability, decentralization, devotion and transparency were the vital ingredients in any socio-economic development dynamics.
He said these ingredients were what Tema Municipal Assembly adopted to ensure success of the Project.
He said the project had highlighted the impact in reducing the level of confrontation between the ratepayers and the TMA.
Mr Fawundu assured TMA that plans were far advanced to provide funds for the provision of technical support for the mobilisation of resources to implement the action plan for development of the area.
Mr Samuel Ashong Narh, TMA Chief Executive, commended UNDP/UNV for their assistance and said their intervention had created conducive environment for successive annual increases in their internal generated funds for the last two years.
He said the project had come to solve the issue of lack of confidence, social cohesion and trust between the taxpayer and the assembly, adding, " we are very grateful".
He appealed to other organisations to come to the aid of the assembly to solve its sanitation problem.
